Deep red walls cluttered with prints, watercolours, random weaponry and a few heads of noble beasts that had given up their haunches for the dinner table. Tartan carpets and upholstery. Glimmering candlelight, dark wood accents, a long, highly polished bar with green leather stools on barley-twist legs. Good Lord. I had started out just behind Victoria station and ended up in highland country house holiday.
Happily, both the food and the entertainment at Boisdale (pronounced Boys-dale) of Belgravia lived up to my first impressions, vaulting this place immediately into my top 5 restaurants in London. I simply can't wait to go back.
Those of you who haven't been to Scotland much may scoff at the very idea of a Scottish themed restaurant. To this veteran of several idyllic holidays in the highlands, it made perfect sense. The Scots produce fantastic beef and game, have some of the best salmon in the world, take plenty more seafood out of the nation's cold, clean waters, produce specialties like haggis and shortbread and top it all off with single malt whiskys as various on the tongue as are wines. That is a good ingredients list, and the chef at Boisdale puts them together with flair.
I started with scallops and haggis. Not a combination I'd ever considered, but I like both things, so why not give it a try? It was one of the most beautiful presentations I've seen in a long time. A zig-zag trail of light green pea puree underpinned a line of perfectly matched circles of black and white: scallop, haggis, scallop, haggis, scallop. These were each anchored to the plate by a slightly larger circle of fine saffron potato mash. Laying over the top of the circles was a single, long spear of crispy bacon. The whole thing had the look of some exotic musical note; appropriate, as this is also a jazz club. The taste was as good as the look. The scallops were perfectly cooked: sweet yet smoky, firm yet soft. The unctuous, meaty richness of the haggis was a perfect partner, sharpened by the sweetness of the bacon while getting extra smoothness from the mash. So perfect a dish, I can't imagine getting anything else upon my return, although my companion's slices of goose breast on a mixed salad looked good, too.
Moving on to the main course, Boisedale's menu gets very simple. There's the fish, offal or game of the day, two other options and a list of steaks (Aberdeen angus, of course) prepared with your choice of one of three sauce and side combinations. My 7-ounce fillet with black truffle sauce and black truffle polenta was a perfect medium rare, smoky and crisp on the outside, pink and mouth-meltingly tender interior. This is the kind of flavour that reminds me why I could never be a vegetarian. The polenta was a fine side and suitably simple; the steak was so good anything else would have paled in comparison. Across the table sat the offal of the day, a combination of liver and two other suspect parts (wiped from my memory) that were beautifully presented, but still couldn't tempt me for a try. My liver-loving dining partner proclaimed himself well satisfied.
The choice of the small fillet left room for desert of a ginger pudding with sticky toffee sauce. I was worried that I might have made a bad choice, piling rich sweet on top of rich main. But the cake was filled with sharp, tart pieces of fresh ginger that cut right through all that heaviness.
Then, of course, it was time for the single malts. Boisdale has a whisky book of more than 100 choices, all beautifully described with detailed tasting notes, with prices starting from £6 a glass. Average for my favourites seemed to be around £10. This was perhaps the highlight of the whole meal, given the fact that we were on expense account (my lead agency, Fishburn Hedges, was taking me out at the end of the financial year in thanks and celebration) and my host handed me the menu and told me to pick for both of us. We had two rounds, sampling four different single malts between us (Aberlour, Glenfarclas, Mortlach and Glen Grant) and probably would have done more had not the service been a bit slow and my last train time gotten in the way.
It's clearly an expense account and special event kind of place, though there is a range here. While starters top out at £19.50 (wild smoked salmon) and the mains can go up to a heart-stopping £52 (28 oz fillet), you can do a two course set menu for £18.50 and there's a good range of prices on the a la carte menu. There are some great values on the wine list (we started with a South American chardonnay that was a bargain at £18.50) and there are reasonably priced whiskys. If you're careful you could probably bring a three course meal with a couple of drinks in for £50. If you're profligate ...? Well, fortunately I didn't see the bill.
That cost would be defrayed a bit by the entertainment, because it turns out Boisdale is also a renown jazz venue. It was hard to believe the tiny, balcony-sized space that three musicians and a singer wedged themselves into, but from 9pm they created some real magic. This was jazz leaning towards blues, and the last time I've heard guys this good play live I was in Kingston Mines in Chicago. A word of warning: if you want to have any meaningful conversation over dinner you need to either book early so you can talk before the music starts, as we did, or specifically ask for a table in one of the rooms away from the main space.
One Boisdale indulgence we didn't get to sample was the cigar terrace. Smoking is now illegal everywhere indoors in the UK. At Boisdale they've fitted up a rooftop garden full of space heaters to which you can break between courses or retire to in order to sip your scotch. If, like me, you are a non-smoker who spends a lot of time with a nicotine fiend, this is a far more civilised solution than being abandoned at the table while he smokes on the pavement outside. This feature is so popular, however, that it has to be booked in advance. Lesson for next time.
And there will be a next time. I've been dreaming about that that scallops and haggis every night...
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